National guardsmen filling crucial role during service on border amidst crisis
YUMA, Ariz. – Staff Sgt. Chris Ca zares is panting to catch his breath after slicing down a salt cedar on the banks of the Colorado 5iver with one of those orange handled saws commonly used in school shop class.
A supervisor at a nursing home, the longtime soldier in the Army 1ational Guard was previously deployed twice to ,raT, where he specialized in neutral izing chemical attacks. 1ow he is de ployed to his hometown on Arizona’s border with Me ico. ere, he is neu tralizing trees.
Cazares is one of roughly 00 guardsmen serving on the border in Ari zona since President onald Trump dis patched the 1ational Guard last April in support of Customs and order Protec tion. 1umbering about , 00 as of early this month, the guardsmen Trump sup plied from across the nation answer to the governor of the state in which they are deployed. The active duty troops the president sent to the border last fall now number about , 0 they report to U.S. 1orthern Command.
The governors of Arizona and Te as have kept the full 1ational Guard border deployments in their states. Supporters of the deployment say the back end assistance from the Guard frees up order Patrol agents to deal with threats from drug smugglers and human traffickers. Presidents George . ush and arack Obama both de ployed the 1ational Guard to the border during their presidencies.
The American military cannot con duct domestic law enforcement activi ties owing to an 8 8 federal law called the Posse Comitatus Act. As a result, the uniformed personnel are helping in the
background rather than dealing directly with migrants crossing the border.
In uma, about guardsmen are performing ancillary tasks for CB3 – clearing brush, fixing machinery, stocking foodstuffs and monitoring surveillance cameras at the sector headquarters. The idea is to free up border agents previously assigned to those duties so that they can instead apprehend and process migrants.
“It’s kind of a godsend,” said 9incent Dulesky, special operations supervisor for public affairs at the Border 3atrol’s uma sector. “As we were getting strained out, you have the National Guard.”
The 2 -mile stretch of Arizona and California border that comprises the uma sector is a mplange of worlds – tribal areas, military installations, government parks, majestic sand dunes and vast stretches of agricultural land, much of it harvested by Mexican seasonal laborers who traverse the border with work permits. Sometimes described as the sunniest place in the United States, uma grows much of America’s lettuce. In a local souvenir shop, one uma T-shirt reads “If you’ve had a salad in the winter, you’re welcome.”
The number of people apprehended for crossing the border illegally have more than quadrupled since 2 . The number of border agents assigned to the sector, meanwhile, is roughly the same now as it was in 2 .
More than three-quarters of the people apprehended in uma last year crossed as unaccompanied minors or members of families including children. They tend to surrender to Border 3atrol immediately after crossing into U.S. territory in what the agents call “give ups” – and many file asylum claims. Border 3atrol is supposed to hold them for a maximum of 72 hours. After that, Immigration and Customs Enforcement can keep minors in immigration detention for no longer than 2 days. If a family hasn’t received a hearing by then, authorities must transfer the children to a licensed child-care facility or release them with a parent, who often receives a tracking bracelet and a court date.
These standards create a loophole that is incentivizing migrants to bring children across the border so they can remain in the United States illegally after their release.
In uma, Border 3atrol agents say the changing character of the migration has strained their force. Whereas years ago they tracked mostly Mexican border crossers looking to evade detection, now they say children and families from Central America are showing up in large groups, many requiring medical care after a perilous journey through the Sonoran Desert.
Last month, a group of 7 migrants from Central America crossed into the sector by burrowing under one of the walls erected there during the Bush administration. Nearly half of them were children.
“Every day that we get over in a group is a strain,” Border 3atrol agent Justin .allinger said.
When the sector was apprehending adult Mexican border crossers, agents would detain them for an average of about eight hours and often send them back across the border, .allinger said. Now, he said, the average time in sector custody is about the 72-hour maximum, because Central American migrants require a flight to get home and often are making asylum claims. Agents must provide transport, hospital escorts and food in the interim, duties now claiming far more of their time.
For relief, they are relying on the National Guard.
“Guard. Boom. ere we are,” says Tech. Sgt. Dan Broughton, a -year-old member of the West 9irginia Air National Guard, who after four combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan is monitoring cameras and sensors in the sector’s surveillance room.
Now staffed by about half guardsmen and half civilian employees, the room no longer has border agents behind the monitors because they were moved to front-line law enforcement roles.